If I asked you to guess where we have the best chances of finding life outside of Earth, you’d be hard pressed to think about Europa. But Jupiter’s frozen moon is beginning to look more and more attractive, and may even harbor an Earth-like ocean. We’ve written extensively before about the life harboring possibilities of Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Beneath the

A few years ago, the Cassini spacecraft made a surprising discovery: there are geysers erupting on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, spewing water and ice to great heights. However, the process which causes these geysers remained unknown or controversial. Now, scientists at the University of Chicago and Princeton University have pinpointed a mechanism through which Saturn’s tidal forces exert constant stress and cause

It may be possible to observe the presence of an advanced alien civilization by the effects produced if that civilization were to self-destruct through nuclear war, biological warfare, nanotechnological annihilation, or stellar pollution. Each case would generate unique detectable signs that could be identified by earth-based telescopes.

Yesterday, we presented an article in which we detailed the claims of two astronomers, Director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleague Dr Max Wallis from the University of Cardiff; they proposed that Rosetta’s lander Philae may have actually landed on an inhabited comet – as the black slime on the surface suggests. However, the rest

Comet lander Philae may be sitting on top of microbial life and not even know it – even worse, it has no way of figuring out if it actually is. According to two researchers, the comet’s characteristics (as well as computer simulations) might indicate that the surface may be teeming with microbes. The Rosetta spacecraft was launched in March 2004 by

For decades, researchers have studied our planet’s orbit with growing interest: is there something special about the way the Earth revolves around the Sun, is it a necessary condition for life to emerge? A team of researchers from MIT studied 74 Earth-sized exoplanets and reports that all of them have fairly circular orbits around their stars. Circular vs Eccentric The

Sending a probe to look for alien life is just half of the work – it’s the tools you send there that will actually do the job, and NASA has decided which tools it wants to send to Jupiter’s moon Europa, a place considered by many the likeliest to hold alien life.

NASA has partnered with a private company to design and build an oxygen production facility for a Martian outpost or colony. The make the oxygen, bacteria and algae would use the nitrogen-rich Martian soil to make the precious oxygen, essential for the astronauts’ survival. It can be used to make air, water and fuel.

Just after NASA researchers made the bold claim that they will find alien life in less than 20 years, the space agency has officially launched a project to look for it. The Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, or “NExSS” will be a project integrating several fields of science, aiming to better understand exoplanets with the potential to host life, as well as planet-life interactions.